Just read Hooky's book, Unknown Pleasures, Inside Joy Division. Like his book on the hacienda (How Not to Run a Club) its in the 'reads like listening to your mate in the pub reminiacing about being in a band' category, only it is very good, laugh out loud in places.
hooky wrote:I saw a program once, a battle of the bands sort of thing. It had Alex James and Lauren Laverne and some twat from a record company, and they'd sit there saying what they thought of the band: 'Your bass player's shit and your image needs work, lose the harmonica player'
All the bands just stood there and took it, saying 'Cheers man, we'll go off and do that.'
I couldn't believe it, I joined a band to tell everyone to fuck off and if someone said to me 'Your inage is shit' I'd have said 'Fuck off nob head', and if someone had said 'Your music is shit' I would have nutted them. That to me is what is lacking in groups [today]
Theres even a chapter from the New Order book stuffed in at the end, in this he runs into Liza Minelli at some studio and says someting daft like Hi Liza with a Zee and she tells him to fuck off and he says
hooky wrote:So things weren't getting any better, all our gear had been stolen and I'd just been told to fuck off by Liza Minelli
.
I was goinf to start counting the number of fucks per page but there were just too many. You don't often get that in rock star biographies. Thankfully he avoids much prehistory stuff about what his great grandparents did inthe irish potato famine, or on tour shenanigans stories, which were undoubtably hilarious if you were there 40 years ago but lose the laughter track in the telling. Theres even a chapter called 'Oh Fuck, its Steve Harley'